It is ārNātruly marvellous that the same age which produced a Newton should also have seen flourish that arch-astrologer William Lilly (inimitably satirised by Butler under the name of Sidrophel),[91] whose preposterous predictions were credited even by persons of education. Swift may be said to have dealt the death-blow to astrology by his celebrated squib, entitled “Prediction for the year 1718, by Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.,” in which he ridiculed the prophetic almanac-makers of the day. Astrology having permeated all science and literature, it is not surprising that many of its peculiar terms should have become embodied in our language, as, for example, in the words _consider_ and _contemplate_, _disaster_ and _disastrous_; and we still speak of _jovial_, _mercurial_, and _saturnine_ men.—Kepler, in the preface to his Rudolphine tables, observes that Astrology, though a fool, was the daughter of a wise mother, to whose support and life the foolish daughter was indispensable.[92]
_Page 109._ “In the meantime he caused a subterraneous dwelling to be constructed, to which he sent the boy, with a nurse.”—Sir William Ouseley has omitted to mention that the boy _was_ born—on the following day, according to Lescallier.—Many instances of a father trying to belie the predictions of soothsayers occur in Eastern fiction, and also in classical and European legends. The story of Danae, the daughter of Acrisius, King of Argos, by Eurydice, who was confined in a brazen tower by her father, who had been told by an oracle that his daughter’s son should put him to death, is well known. The underground dwelling of our present tale may be compared with that described in chapter 79 of the English _Gesta Romanorum_; also that in the _Arabian Nights_ (Story of the Second Kalender); and in the _Bāgh o Bahār_ (Tale of the Second Dervish), a young prince, in consequence of the prediction of astrologers that he is menaced with great danger until his fourteenth year, is confined in a vault, lined with felt, so that he should not behold the sun or moon. In Mr Ralston’s _Tibetan Tales_, under the title of “The Fulfilled Prophecy,” the diviners declare that “a son should be born who should take the King’s life and usurp the royal power, setting the diadem on his own head.” In the Norse story of “Rich Peter the Pedlar,”[93] a prediction that his daughter should one day wed a poor man’s son is fulfilled in spite of many efforts to defeat it—a story which seems to have been adapted from the _Gesta Romanorum_, Tale xx of Swan’s translation. And in the Netherlandish Legend of “St Julian the Ferryman,” it is predicted that Julian shall one day put his own father and mother to death; and although the unhappy youth flies into a far distant country, he cannot flee from his terrible destiny, for many years afterwards the prediction proves only too true.[94]